different between frightened vs coward

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?f?a?tn?d/
• Hyphenation: frigh?tened

Adjective

frightened (comparative more frightened, superlative most frightened)

1. Afraid; suffering from fear.

   • He tried to persuade Cicely to stay away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. […] But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd again her partner was haled off with a frightened look to the royal circle, […].

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:afraid

Translations

Verb

frightened

1. simple past tense and past participle of frighten

English

Etymology

From Middle English coward, from Old French coart, cuard ( > French couard), from coue (“tail”), coe + -ard (pejorative agent noun suffix); coue, coe is in turn from Latin cauda. The reference seems to be to an animal “turning tail”, or having its tail between its legs, especially a dog. Unrelated to English cower. Displaced native Old English earg.

Pronunciation

• (UK) enPR: kou'?d, IPA^(key): /?ka??d/
• (US) enPR: kou'?rd, IPA^(key): /?ka??d/
• Hyphenation: co?ward
• Homophone: cowered

Noun

coward (plural cowards)

1. A person who lacks courage.
   • 1856: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part II Chapter IV, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling

     He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred.

Synonyms

• chicken
• scaredy pants
• yellowbelly
• See also Thesaurus:coward

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

coward (comparative more coward, superlative most coward)

1. Cowardly.
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act II, Scene 4,^[1]

     He rais’d the house with loud and coward cries.

   • 1709, Matthew Prior, “Celia to Damon” in Poems on Several Occasions, London: Jacob Tonson, 2nd edition, p. 89,^[2]

     Invading Fears repel my Coward Joy;

     And Ills foreseen the pleasant Bliss destroy.

2. (heraldry, of a lion) Borne in the escutcheon with his tail doubled between his legs.

Verb

coward (third-person singular simple present cowards, present participle cowarding, simple past and past participle cowarded)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To intimidate.
   • 1820, John Chalkhill, Thealma and Clearchus

     The first he coped with was their captain, whom / His sword sent headless to seek out a tomb. / This cowarded the valour of the rest, […]

References

• Coward in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)